Coppola’s The Cotton Club Returning to Albany

The NYS Writers Institute is set to welcome filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola for the Albany premiere of a restored and re-edited The Cotton Club, and a conversation with Writers Institute founder William Kennedy, who co-wrote the film’s original screenplay.

The film is set around Cotton Club, a popular New York City nightclub in the 1920s and 1930s, when it was located on 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue. Coppola’s restored and re-edited film adds 30 minutes of footage not in the original release, including several high-energy musical and dance numbers, and an expansion of the black characters’ stories and performances. Coppola spent half a million dollars of his own money re-editing it.

The Cotton Club Encore premiere will take place on Sunday, October 6, at 2 pm, at The Hart Theatre in The Egg, Empire State Plaza in downtown Albany. The original film premiered in Albany in 1984 at the Palace Theater.

Tickets, $25 per person, are available online or in person at The Egg box office at the Empire State Plaza, or by phone at (518) 473-1845.

Proceeds will support the Writers Institute’s inaugural Albany Film Festival at UAlbany on March 28, 2020.